


the dove descending breaks the air

by call-me-cee (cls1606), enabler (svartalfheimr)



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Prequel Trilogy, Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dark, M/M, NeverASith!Maul
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:48:31
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,388
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28681365
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cls1606/pseuds/call-me-cee, https://archiveofourown.org/users/svartalfheimr/pseuds/enabler
Summary: "The Jedi are coming."
Relationships: Darth Maul/CT-7567 | Rex
Comments: 15
Kudos: 35





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> The dove descending breaks the air  
> With flame of incandescent terror  
> Of which the tongues declare  
> The one discharge from sin and error.  
> The only hope, or else despair  
> Lies in the choice of pyre or pyre—  
> To be redeemed from fire by fire. 
> 
> Who then devised the torment? Love.  
> Love is the unfamiliar Name  
> Behind the hands that wove  
> The intolerable shirt of flame  
> Which human power cannot remove,  
> We only live, only suspire  
> Consumed by either fire or fire.
> 
> ― T.S. Eliot

# Prologue

* * *

The closer they get the colder Maul feels. He frowns, glaring at the unending night, and barely stops himself from flinching as Rex coils himself around him, kissing his jaw soundly. “Don’t be afraid,” he tells him, smiling against his skin. “You’ll see. You belong here.” He bounces Maul slightly on his knees as if to illustrate his point. 

Maul swallows. “With you?” 

Rex laughs in the crook of his neck and nods. 

“What about my brothers?”

“Don’t worry about them,” Rex tuts. “My men will bring them soon enough.”

“Your—”

Rex shushes him, arms tightening around his waist and lips caressing the back of his neck. Maul closes his mouth, heartbeats accelerating as they approach the flagship in silence. Up close the carrier is bigger and more ominous than any ship he’s ever seen. He wonders if it is bigger than the Silent Sea. 

Rex’s breath is steady and warm against his nape, but-

He wonders who builds a ship like that and calls it the Peacemaker. 

“Rex.”

“Yeah?”

Maul swallows, takes a deep breath and releases it as calmly as he can into the frigid air. “I am cold,” he admits. “My body, but also- there is- inside me, I feel-”

Rex stiffens. His hold abruptly tightens—so much so that Maul gasps aloud. He tries to move but Rex’s arms are vice-like as he buries his head in the back of Maul’s neck. Maul’s body screams in fear. He doesn’t know why but he knows he _must_ leave. “I want to go back,” he says. Rex doesn’t say anything. His hold is suffocating. “Let me go _back_.”

“Don’t be afraid,” Rex whispers, but Maul only hears _I’m sorry_. “Lord Vader will be so pleased to see you.”


	2. Chapter One

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I heard a Fly buzz - when I died -  
> The Stillness in the Room  
> Was like the Stillness in the Air -  
> Between the Heaves of Storm -
> 
> The Eyes around - had wrung them dry -  
> And Breaths were gathering firm  
> For that last Onset - when the King  
> Be witnessed - in the Room -
> 
> I willed my Keepsakes - Signed away  
> What portion of me be  
> Assignable - and then it was  
> There interposed a Fly -
> 
> With Blue - uncertain - stumbling Buzz -  
> Between the light - and me -  
> And then the Windows failed - and then  
> I could not see to see -
> 
> \--- Emily Dickenson, I heard a Fly buzz - when I died - (591)

# Chapter One

* * *

“The Jedi are coming,” Feral said as he dumped his load of firewood by the door. Savage barely acknowledged the words, grabbing a log to add to their breakfast fire, but Maul perked up from his ablutions. 

“How do you know?” Maul wiped his face with a towel and moved to stand near the fire. The morning chill made the Dathomiri swamps miserable during the winter. 

“Heard it at the well this morning.”

“Gossip never did much to get chores done,” Savage growled, poking through the flames. A spark flew out and landed on his arm, and he batted at it angrily. Maul and Feral shared a glance. Whatever the Nightsisters had done to him last year hadn’t just changed his body; his every emotion seemed heightened - as if he was brimming with liquid fire that could flow out and kill them at any moment. No one but Maul and Feral would speak with him. 

“It’s not gossip, Savage. Brother Viscus saw the ship entering orbit this morning.” 

“How do you know it was the Jedi?” Maul asked, frowning. 

Feral cocked his head. “Well…who else would it be?” 

“Someone could finally be responding to our trade overtures.”

Savage snorted, still poking through the fire morosely. “Fat chance.”

Feral grabbed Maul’s arm before he could whirl on Savage. “Outside, please?” He begged. With a parting glare at their oldest brother, Maul stormed out. 

Feral sighed and turned. “Please, Savage. Not before lunch, at least.” When he received no response other than a surly one-shouldered shrug, he pursed his lips together to avoid another sigh and followed Maul. 

Maul was pacing in front of their hut, pinching the bridge of his nose. When Feral exited, he didn’t even look up, just started talking. “It could be the best-case scenario. The Jedi opening up trade negotiations with the new Dathomiri democracy on behalf of the Empire.” At Feral’s incredulous look, he cringed. “I don’t think so either.” 

“Maul,” Feral said slowly. “The Jedi…we know what they’re probably here for. _Who_ they’re probably here for.” 

“No.” Head shaking vigorously, Maul paced faster. 

“We knew this was a possibility.”

“NO.” He stopped, staring off into the middle distance. “All we wanted was to be left alone. Why can’t they just leave us alone?” 

Feral didn’t have an answer. At least, not one that Maul would accept. 

* * *

If there was one thing Maul appreciated about the Nightsisters’ disgusting genetics program, it was that his skin pattern was absolutely perfect for a scout’s camouflage. He moved slowly, staying in the dappled shadows of the Dathomiri swamp-palms as he inched his way closer to the foreign ship. It was curious that they had landed so far from any settlement, but Maul figured that rumors of the uprising made any pilot uneasy about landing close. After all, sickly green smoke was still (perpetually) rising from the ruins of the Nightsister caverns. It could probably be seen from orbit. 

The ship had landed in a large valley several kilometers from Maul’s village. It had taken him the better part of the morning to make his way to his current vantage point amidst the trees on the mountainside, and at this rate night would fall before he could figure out exactly what they were doing. No search parties had been sent out that he could see, but Jedi were supposedly able to turn invisible, so Maul couldn’t discount that they’d already passed him. He shivered. What if _he_ was the one being watched? 

He could almost hear Feral’s chuckle. _Well, there’s nothing you can do about that now, can you?_ Ever the optimist, his twin. Feral always seemed to see the best in everyone. His kindness disarmed people, made them underestimate him. Maul had no such advantage. 

Were all the soldiers down there Jedi? Dathomir - _the Brothers_ , Maul corrected himself silently (the Sisters had _never_ been vulnerable, until suddenly they were) - had been cut off from the wider galaxy for so long that Maul still wasn’t sure how everything worked, despite studying the flimsy and holos they’d salvaged from the Sisters’ Grand Library. Most of the material had been regarding the use of their native magic, but Maul had perused the few political missives the Brothers had saved, and from what he could glean the Purge had decimated the Jedi’s native numbers. No, these soldiers must be their army. They did have one, Maul recalled, a clan branch of Mandalorians. 

_”Mandalorians,” Viscus spat. Maul subtly shuffled away from the hot spittle on the ground, clenching the pilfered holo in his fist. “Always have to be part of some Empire or another.”_

Maul wondered if they got to choose their paint or if they had it chosen for them by village elders like Viscus. 

The one in charge was talking to someone on a holo. Maul was too far away to hear, but he saw the salute, and as the leader turned to give orders to the others Maul was startled to see horns painted on his helm. What was the significance? He was certainly watchful like a Zabrak. His head was continually on a swivel, parsing the landscape. Maul would have to watch that one carefully. 

It was getting dark, Dathomir’s winter twilight coming on fast. Maul’s vision was getting sharper and sharper the darker it got, but he knew that his eyes would also give him away to any sentients scanning the area. As if to prove the point, two Baz Nitch scuffling in the underbrush froze as he turned his glowing gaze on them. He blinked and they fled into the underbrush. Well, that meant it was time to go. Maul turned back to the ship for one last look and-

Wait. The leader. Where was he? 

Maul scanned the area frantically. In the brief time he’d spared to watch the local fauna, the horned leader and three of his men had disappeared. With his sharpening night vision he spied tracks leading away from the ship towards the swamp, but despite their white and blue armor they had somehow disappeared into the gloom. 

He’d lost them. His brothers were going to _kill_ him. Now it was _definitely_ time to go. He grabbed his staff and jumped down from his perch on the swamp-palm- 

-only to turn and come abruptly face-to-face with that same horned helm, flanked by the other missing soldiers. Maul stared down the barrels of four rifles aimed at his chest, then brought his shocked eyes up to the horned man’s visor. 

The man cocked his head. “Hi.” 

Maul ran. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> *yeets this into the void and runs away*


End file.
